What do you think is the most important invention of the current century? Could it be the iPhone, the Nissan Leaf or the Nintendo Wii? Or, perhaps, the iPad?
The Telegraph newspaper has listed 18 of the most significant inventions of the century and it constitutes a pretty strange bunch. While I’ve never heard of the AbioCor artificial heart, and I have a very passing acquaintance with IBM’s Watson, the rest sound a likely candidates.
It is particularly interesting that no fewer than three Apple products are featured in the list—iPod, iPhone and iPad. All three are worthy contenders; and I would even go further and add the App Store concept to the list. In its way, it is the App Store that has empowered both the iPhone and the iPad and helped make them the successes that they have become. Another interesting omission is Twitter. I wonder why?
Both phone and tablet have transformed our lives. And the iPad, in particular, has altered for the better the lives of a generation of older people. Before the iPad they were largely excluded from the benefits of the computer age. No longer, for the iPad is not seen as a computer, it is merely a tool for emails, web browsing, booking holidays and keeping in touch with friends.
In addition to the well-deserved placings for Apple’s three landmark products, there’s no denying the impact of Bluetooth, Skype, Facebook, YouTube or the Amazon Kindle. All, in their own ways have transformed our lives. Spotify, too, has turned the music industry upside down. It’s been a long road from the LP and the CD, but now most of us can enjoy unlimited music at a nominal cost.
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The actual progression in my experience is usually two steps forward and one step back. So long as the number of steps forward exceed the number of steps back, then we are still making progress. I hope that makes sense.
William
PS: Kitty O’ Shea is now better known for having pubs named after her in Dublin and Brussels than anything else. Progress?
Wasn’t she Old Mother Riley’s daughter/wife?
Not so different to compromising politicians then William… I suppose it is progress of a kind… Yes.
BTW: I think your rule of thumb depends on which discipline one is applying it to…
e.g. I heard that the average electric car in the early 1900’s had a range of 85 miles, whereas due to the magnificent progress made to battery technology through the use of rare earth metals, the average range of the modern electric car is… er… 85 miles.
As William states… It’s a bit early to talk about the 21st century, it is less than 20 years old!
The greatest invention of the 20th century by 1916 was what? We had Dreadnoughts, and we had war…
But we didn’t have votes for women, we didn’t have the freedom of the highways (unless one was a toff), we hadn’t demonstrated the power of organised labour.
But what else did we have… Lovely beards, we had tales of politicians getting into hot water with women, simply because they were saying something that was self evident, that more of us proles should be included in something called democracy…
Oh…
We also had the promise of a peoples’ camera…
The Leica <strike>er</strike> UR.
Of course it didn’t actually shimmy along for another ten years…
But all good things come to those who wait!
How can I strike something Mike? The old HTML method doesn’t work, nevertheless it is a useful device, if available?
Dear Farage,
I am sure you are right. I wrote the piece with tongue firmly in cheek because of exactly the reservations you raise. It’s a bit like those populist votes for the Greatest Englishman and Woman of All Time in the 1990s: Who else but John Lennon and Princess Diana? Let’s face it, some people are blissfully ignorant of anything that happened more than five years/one year/ six months ago, so they cannot be expected to make rational decisions.
Look at it another way, the invention of the electric telegraph in 1816 went totally unrecognised for another 20 years when it was resurrected by two entrepreneurs and turned into a success. It would not have been in the 1816 list of The Most Significant Inventions of the Nineteenth Century.
Valitsa down.
Dear Mike…
I didn’t realise that we had WiFi back in 1816…?
I can barely get it now!
Yes we did! But it was confined to glass tubes crisscrossing the garden of what was later Kelmscott House, home of the old socialist wallpaper maker, William Morris. Sir Francis Renolds was the guy…
I used to deliver an evening newspaper to Bill Morris’s old gaff…
The Red House in Bexleyheath…
Onwards and upwards… There’s a long way up from Bexleyheath, I might add!
Its a bit soon to be saying anything ‘major’ about the 21st Century. Come back in 20 years and, if any of the items listed are still around, then make the call about major innovations. At present we seem to be into a semi-permanent cycle of annual or even more frequent ‘innovations’. It’s the ones that last that count in my book. I am waiting for the true ‘iPad Air’ where you can project data, information and entertainment into a space in the air in front of you from a button on your coat, using thought processes to call the different items up. I think that Apple, if they are still around, could call it the iButton. The ‘intermediate technology’ step could be iSpecs, but people who don’t wear glasses would probably be clamouring for an upgrade to the iButton, particularly the one with the f0.75 Leica lens. Now there’s a thought to get over yesterday’s disappointment!
William